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Thoughts From The Publisher’s Desk

Some details were clarified in this week’s press conference regarding last week’s double fatal fire at St. Paul’s by the Sea Episcopal Church on 3rd Street. However, the biggest question looks like it will remain unanswered forever. Why?
Ocean City Police Captain Mike Colbert touched on that topic in his comments at the presser. Ever since the fire happened and it was confirmed foul play was involved, most people wanted to know why the man set himself ablaze and walked into a church’s food pantry of all places. Colbert acknowledged the city’s investigation will probably never reveal that.
“We’re still going through the process, and we’ve exhausted most of our witness interviews, but there is still one more victim we need to interview and the investigation remains open until such as time as we can interview the other victim,” he said. “There is no indication he was trying to single anybody out, nor is there any evidence he acted with malice toward the church. There is no indication of motivation and we may never know his true intent. We are fairly certain he intended to take his own life, but there is no evidence of intent as far as the church or any individual.”
Our society wants answers, particularly when it comes to unthinkable tragedies. It only adds more sadness to this situation to know those may never come in this case.

Although not a surprise due to recent signs, it was disappointing to see the proposed beach music festival officially canned by the promoter.
Along with competition from other music festivals in the area, another concern all along among city staff and officials was the timing of the event being the last weekend in May and into early June. There was a time when June badly needed special events to diversify the crowds and attract people that were over the age of 21 years of age.
Those days are now behind us because June is now arguably the busiest special event month on the town’s calendar. While it looks like this particular promoter has ceased current plans altogether, any future big beach music events might want to consider September as an alternative time of year.

For the last several weeks, WBOC has been recklessly plagiarizing this company’s content. It has largely been on its Facebook page, but there have been instances on its website and on television when information was blatantly used that came from this publication or its online associations.
An email to the station was not returned questioning why this was taking place on a continual basis the last couple months. It’s not unusual for the local television stations to use print content to derive ideas for their segments, but it crosses the line when literal word-for-word accounts are used and not attributed to the media source.
Therefore, rather than WBOC’s favorite “here we grow again” phrase, we simply say in our newsroom, “here they go again”.

Tis the season so I thought I would share with you the lyrics Heather McCabe submitted from a song she titled “Walking In An OC Wonderland.” The lyrics she wrote she imagines sung with the song “Winter Wonderland”.

The buoys ring, are you listening, In the bay , the waters glistening. A beautiful sight, on the beach tonight. Walking in an OC wonderland. Gone away are the tourists. All that’s here are Eastern Shore-ists. No lines for the fries or the pizza pies. Walking in an OC wonderland. In the sand we can build a castle, and watch the waves take it out to sea. Finding a spot to build is no hassle, cuz on the beach it’s only you and me. Northside Park has Christmas lights. At the bars, there are no fights. It’s just LOCALS here, spreading good-will and cheer.
Walking in an OC wonderland.

One comment on “Thoughts From The Publisher’s Desk”

Just yesterday I had the “here we go again” thought about WBOC. I had read the MSP press release about arrest of those thought to be responsible for the Thanksgiving day murder in Princess Anne. Looking for further info on the now defendants, led me to WBOC, where pretty much verbatim (except 1st paragraph changing “murder” to “fatal shooting”), they had posted the MSP press release AND credited the story to one of their employees. When I read your editorial this morning, I had to laugh. Seems some of us have noticed this about WBOC too.